The Obama administration has awarded $220m (£146m) in new contracts to the military contractor formerly known as Blackwater to provide security in Afghanistan. This is despite accusations against the company of murder and indiscriminate killings of civilians in Iraq and investigations into alleged corruption and sanctions busting. The contracts have drawn stinging criticism in Congress [...]

Over the past five years, the U.S. government has spent a combined $80 billion on contractors to support its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that has U.S. military leaders concerned: On Friday, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan suggested that the coalition had become too dependent on private contractors to carry out its mission there effectively. [...]

Philip Giraldi, on March 29th, 2010 at 6:42 am Said: The war economy runs on the Dick Cheney 1% principle – if there is a one per cent chance of something happening a massive security response is justified. Every single “threat” since 9/11 has been hyped unrealistically to require creation of a huge government infrastructure. [...]

As a journalist, as well as a military veteran and former Iraq contractor, I try to keep abreast of the latest developments in America’s warfighting forces—public and private. Which is why I was unsurprised to find a new report this month by the DOD inspector general on KBR’s lazy Iraq contracting. But I was surprised when I found no [...]

America has spent more than $6 billion since 2002 in an effort to create an effective Afghan police force, buying weapons, building police academies, and hiring defense contractors to train the recruits—but the program has been a disaster. More than $322 million worth of invoices for police training were approved even though the funds were [...]

The legal issues can’t really be fully assessed without much more information than has been reported so far, but I see three separate problems—in ascending order of significance: Appropriated funds. Specific rules govern the use of congressionally appropriated funds, requiring the money to be used for the purpose for which it was in fact approved. [...]

The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors from private security companies that employed former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives. The contractors, in turn, gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps, and the information was then sent to military units and intelligence officials for possible lethal action in Afghanistan [...]

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has issued a strong warning to the Defense Department over plans to award $1 billion in new contracts to the firm formerly known as Blackwater, accusing managers of the private security company of lying to win lucrative jobs in Afghanistan. Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) also cited a history [...]

Wow, the corruption is/was worse than even my imagination is capable of thinking up… and the DoJ isn’t taking action? WTF? The former employees who filed the lawsuit, a married couple named Brad and Melan Davis, said there was little financial oversight of the money. Last year, an audit by the special inspector general for [...]

In an interview with the Pakistani TV station Express TV, Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that the private security firms Blackwater and DynCorp are operating inside Pakistan. “They’re operating as individual companies here in Pakistan,” Gates said, according to a DoD transcript of the interview. “There are rules concerning the contracting companies.  If they’re contracting [...]

Still, the government has failed to hold armed contractors accountable. When its formal occupation of Iraq ended in 2004, the Bush administration demanded that Baghdad grant legal immunity to private contractors. Congress has tried to cover such crimes with American law. The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act extends civilian law to contractors supporting military operations overseas, [...]

A judge in America threw out charges against members of the Blackwater security company yesterday who were accused of killing Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in one of the most notorious incidents since the 2003 invasion. The ruling will be met with anger in Iraq, where feelings ran high at the time. Fourteen to 17 people [...]